The video shows a shirtless, shoeless man meandering down a dirt driveway with a dog at his side. As vehicles drive by on a nearby road, he can be seen dropping to the ground.
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The video, captured Thursday afternoon on a security camera on Hawaii’s Big Island, prompted the property owner to call 911 immediately.
To Mark Wyatt, who with his partner owns the 4-acre parcel in the rural Puna District, the man’s identity seemed clear. Although his face wasn’t visible, it looked like Jacob Baker, a onetime neighbor who was now a suspect in a series of killings. He was the subject of an intense manhunt and a wave of fear across Wyatt’s normally quiet, tight-knit stretch of Hawaii’s east coast.
Within an hour of making his 911 call, Wyatt told NBC News, he got a call from a police officer. Baker had been apprehended, he recalled the officer saying.
“It was a big relief,” said Wyatt, 61. “Everybody was afraid he could show up at their house with a machete.”
A spokeswoman for the Hawaii Police Department declined to comment on the video’s role in Baker’s apprehension. But during a Thursday news conference announcing the arrest, Hawaii Police Chief Reed Mahuna thanked a tipster who “saw something, said something and helped bring this manhunt to a safe conclusion.”
That tip, Mahuna said, alerted authorities that the possible suspect had been hiding in a grassy area and ducking as traffic passed by.
The observations were corroborated by security video, the chief said.
Officers responded and found Baker, 36, concealed in a small cave on a neighboring property. He was taken into custody without incident on suspicion of second-degree murder and other crimes, Reed said.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Baker has a lawyer to speak on his behalf.
Authorities said earlier that Baker was responsible for or involved in the deaths of three men — Robert Shine and John Carse, both 69, and a 79-year-old man who has not been identified.
Shine was found dead Monday. The other two men were found Tuesday.
Autopsies determined that Shine was strangled and Carse died from sharp force trauma, the police department said. The other man died from what a police official described as blunt force injuries.
No motive has been identified, and Mahuna has said that the only known connection between two of the victims was their close proximity to each other. Mahuna said they lived several hundred feet apart.
Wyatt and his partner, Richard Valdez, said they’re in the process of building a house on the oceanfront land where their security camera — which is attached to a monkey-pod tree — captured the man they believe was Baker.
Wyatt said the man appeared to have camped at the property, using cushions to make what Wyatt described as a fort near a cliff. They weren’t sure how long the man had been there.
Wyatt was last at his property Monday to mow and spray leaves, he said. Authorities later began canvassing the area and using drones overhead in their search for Baker, he said.
Wyatt and Valdez, who live nearby, said that Baker was a neighbor of theirs for roughly six months a couple of years ago. At the time, Wyatt said, Baker had a girlfriend and a baby and worked harvesting coconuts.
“He was a level-headed guy,” Valdez said.
The woman left with the child, and Baker moved out, Wyatt said, but he remained in the area and they’d see him selling coconuts at an intersection near their property.
They weren’t sure what happened to Baker, but Wyatt said that something must have “clicked with him.”
After he was captured, the men posted the security video on Facebook. In a post on the platform, Valdez explained why he shared the video, saying he hoped to “empower people with the knowledge of what actually transpired right before Jake Baker’s arrest and show people it takes the community to come forward in situations like this.”
